Wednesday, 11 January 2012

Row Row Row Your...Washer?

We were introduced to the
“joys” of homeownership early on. Christmas Eve day we moved everything into
the house – again the boys moved amazingly fast and had everything moved in one
trip! Once we had everything somewhat sorted and were finally alone, we
thought, “what better to do now that we’re alone than…laundry!” We had to test
the washing machine to make sure it worked. Neither of us were overly confident
that the machine straight out of 1960 could handle much...so we picked a sheet that
needed washing (and that we didn’t really care what happened too) and a few of
Jason’s work shirts for our maiden voyage with it. Everything started out
great. The water was pouring in, and it sudsed up fine…that’s about when things
started going wrong. When it was agitating the clothes it was making a not so
great sound. Jason checked on it, and it wasn’t jumping around or anything so
we figured it’d be ok. Then it sounded like it was draining all over the floor
– but it wasn’t, so again we thought it was ok. I went in to check on
things…and it smelled like burnt rubber, and a little bit like fire. GREAT!
Jason opens the window and turns on the fan. At this point the washer was on
its final “dry” cycle and it’s filled, literally to the brim with water. Jason
tried a few more times to get it to drain out, but to no avail. So we had to
ring out the clothes. Did I mention that the water was FREEZING! Our hands were
all red, and like little ice blocks. Jason’s ring kept falling off…I told him
(for about the 100th time) that it’s because it’s too big. He says
it’s only because his hand has shriveled up…sheesh. He tried again, this time
with no clothes, to see if it would drain…nope, nothin’. Then we had fun using
pots to bail it out, pretending we were in a sinking ship.

We knew we were going to
need to replace the washer and dryer sooner rather than later, but we were
hoping it would at least last us until the end of the kitchen reno. Luckily
Brent says they have an extra one they can spare to tied us over until we can
get a new set. It was pretty eventful, and hilarious, and in terms of things
that could go wrong; a washer we didn’t expect to last more than a couple
months dying isn’t that big of a deal. Here’s hoping things going wrong doesn’t
become a weekly occurrence or anything though.